TTG Asia’s senior editor Raini Hamdi interviewing
Philippe Starck during M Social’s media event held yesterday
HOTEL design is nothing without the right operator to bring “life” to the property, says pioneer of design and lifestyle hotels Philippe Starck, who was in Singapore yesterday at the media launch of Millennium and Copthorne Hotels (M&C)’s first M Social hotel in the world which he designed.
Responding to a question from TTG Asia e-Daily if he thinks hotels such as The South Beach in Singapore will be more original if it is self-managed than operated by a global hotel brand, Starck said this was the difficult question for owners.
“Me, I make the stage. You, now you need the movie director and without the right one, all of this will never work. They have to have the same ‘mood’, the same ‘tribe’; it’s difficult otherwise to drive a hotel like that, which is so personal,” he said.
M Social and South Beach both represent the dream of Singapore tycoon and developer Kwek Leng Beng, chairman of M&C, to create an iconic impact in the global industry. Kwek is in two minds about self-managing the South Beach and is in talks with Marriott International to flag it as a JW.
When asked about it at M Social’s media event yesterday, Kwek said it was “still not confirmed” if JW would manage South Beach and declined to say more.
Starck designed both South Beach and M Social. In an interview, he said in the wake of so many design, boutique and lifestyle brands, the life and soul of hotels have become ever more crucial.
“Design is nothing. Before design, there’s humanity, generosity, vision. I am not making a design but a movie. When I design something, I don’t know if it is beautiful or not, I don’t care. But I know step by step what my friends will feel, see, what emotions they will have and when they leave, they will say to their wife, ‘Oh my god, I was in a place and it was full of energy, it gave me ideas, it made me creative. Design is not life,” Starck said.
If South Beach was well-managed, he added, it would be the most “classic” hotel in Singapore, which he defined as “perfect, timeless, with astonishing quality”; not because it was on some front cover of a magazine but because it did not forget the people aspect and it made guests feel they were at home with “mood, feeling, soul”. He added it was ridiculous how so many hotels now were lifeless.
“I invented the boutique hotel and when we see the ‘children’ of boutique hotels today, I’m ashamed. My wife and I travel every day. We prefer classic hotels; we never go to trendy hotels,” he said, adding that super trendy hotels riled him the most. “You know its lifespan is two years. When you go to sleep, you don’t know where the switch is and when you wake up, you wait two hours for the breakfast.”
When asked how South Beach and M Social inspired him when designing them, Starck said: “My body has the age to go to South Beach, but my brain has the age to come here,” referring to M Social, which is designed for the millennial mindset.
“South Beach is a very well done hotel. It is for interesting, intelligent, cultured, fun businessmen and fun parents. Here (M Social), it is for the crazy children, because we hope all our children will be crazy.
“South Beach talks about the serious part of Singapore, money. M Social talks about the future of Singapore – the life, creativity, what the young people will do in Singapore.”
Meanwhile, Starck hints of a new brand he is developing in France which he said would be a “revolution”. It is set to be launched in September. In Asia, he is designing another hotel in Taiwan.
He is not interested to set up a Philippe Starck hotel brand.
“My job is to dream and create, not to know if the champagne is cold. We’re not operators. Everybody has to know his know-how and make the best use of it,” he said.
– Read more on TTG Asia’s July issue as Millennium Hotels & Resorts’ president-Asia, Cetin Sekergioglu, and M Social general manager Ting Huong Tak talk about injecting life into M Social
